“By refusing to repeat himself or anyone else, Volans remains one of the planet’s most distinctive and unpredictable voices.”
Kyle Gann - Village Voice New York Feb 1998
"When it comes to composers, only a few today could be called true originals, and Kevin Volans is one of them."
John Allison - The Times, London 20 July 1999
"What sustains it all is freshness and verve. There's a rhythmic
exuberance and total lack of predictability...The perspectives always
change in these works; you constantly want to discover what happens
next."
Andrew Clements - The Guardian, London 17 July 1999
"...behind this [Volans's] eye resides what we now have to think of as one of the most remarkable musical minds of our time."
Chistopher Ballantine - International Record Review May 2000
“Volans is a composer of staggering gifts. He has the courage to
abandon familiar sound worlds and the skill entirely to convince…”
Annette Morreau – Independent, London 2 April 2001
"…When I suggested last week that Morton Feldman's beautifully
unassertive music might point to the music of the future, 1 did not
expect confirmation within a matter of days."
Paul Driver, The Sunday Times, London 17th Feb, 2002
" a score designed to inspire delight and awe -- awe at the
superhuman exertions of the pianist, delight at the clarity and
exuberance of the music."
Joshua Kosman, The San Francisco Chronicle, 17 November 2006
Piano Concerto no. 2 Altlantic Crossing (2006)
Players rise to challenge of daunting piano concerto
Joshua Kosman
Chronicle Music Critic
17 November 2006
The San Francisco Chronicle
There's no such thing as an easy piano concerto, but even among the tough nuts there are gradations.
Kevin Volans' splashy, ferocious "Atlantic Crossing," which had its exciting world premiere at Davies Symphony Hall on
Wednesday night, takes a proud stand right out there on the frontier of difficulty.
Written on a commission from the San Francisco Symphony, Volans' 25-minute concerto is a
breathless orgy of crashing chords, jagged rhythms and tumultuous orchestral textures, punctuated
here and there by brief interludes of serenity. The soloist is at work almost without pause, and the
demands on the orchestra are no less grueling.
But if "Atlantic Crossing" is a killer for the performers, it's a wonderfully accessible feast for the audience.
Melding the emotional transparency of the Romantic concerto tradition with the varied repetitions of post-minimalism,
Volans writes with the listener uppermost in mind, and the results are thrilling.
Wednesday's soloist was pianist Marc-Andr Hamelin, making a welcome Symphony debut in a score worthy of
his prodigious talents. Michael Tilson Thomas led the Symphony in an athletic, crisply controlled performance.
And all of it was in the service of a score designed to inspire delight and awe -- awe at the
superhuman exertions of the pianist, delight at the clarity and exuberance of the music.
The predominant feature of "Atlantic Crossing" is its rhythmic explosiveness, with an arsenal of
bongos, congas and tom-toms keeping up a steady Latin-tinged backbeat. Jack Van Geem and James Lee
Wyatt III were the hard-working percussionists, co-soloists in all but name.
The pianist, meanwhile, labored to raise the rhythmic temperature with page after page of huge,
bristling chords. They crashed high and low with the feverish intensity of one of Messiaen's ecstatic
outbursts, and Hamelin dispatched these passages with utmost precision and an almost otherworldly air of calm.
But Volans reaches further back for his models as well. The opening of Tchaikovsky's First Concerto -- tolling
chords rising in counterpart to orchestral melody -- lurks everywhere in "Atlantic Crossing," either explicitly
or by implication. In one particularly beautiful central section Volans rebukes Tchaikovsky by writing piano
chords with a fascinating rhythmic profile, something the older composer had neglected to do.
Occasionally, Volans varies things with a stretch of rhapsodic writing for strings and brass, allowing the
pianist a breather by asking for no more than single notes in succession. Hamelin showed his mettle even here,
shaping those simple melodies with limpid grace.
There's no avoiding the sense that "Atlantic Crossing" is often a little denser than it needs to be to make
its full impact ("too many notes," as the Emperor Joseph II may have said to Mozart).
But what's most exciting about this score is how deftly Volans manages repetition to keep the
overall rhetoric comprehensible. Musical ideas arrive and stick around until they're firmly in
our ears (but no longer); because we understand the baseline, the rhythmic and harmonic variations
then register all the more intriguingly.
In the end, I suppose the music's daunting difficulty may make it hard for "Atlantic Crossing" to get
the wider exposure it deserves. Are there other pianists out there willing to take on Volans' challenges,
let alone go toe-to-toe with Hamelin's fearsome example? We shall see
REVIEW OF HAMELIN / SFS PERFORMANCE
'An exciting and important new orchestral statement'
Pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin doesn't look like a guy who could burn down
the house, and for that matter, neither does the composer, yet their
collaboration produced a very exciting debut and a fascinating look at
what is happening on the international music scene.
Some listeners heard a variety of influences ranging from Tchaikovsky
to Messiaen, and I, too, found snippets that included the Bernstein of
West Side Story and even some Liszt. Whatever the impetus, Volans has
forged a piece that is unique, and he has found the ideal interpreter
in Hamelin.
Following the arc of Atlantic Crossing proved surprisingly easy, but I
hope to hear it again to really get a grip on the composer's audacious
demands. The soloist didn't appear daunted by the blinding flurry of
notes, the monumental chords or frightening technical challenges. His
performance made the near half-hour workout seem well within his grasp
(and ours). The Shostakovich could easily have overpowered this
premiere, but it didn't manage to erase the memory of an exciting and
important new orchestral statement.
Susan Guralnik, Publicity, Distributed Labels harmonia mundi usa
Joining Up the Dots (2006)
Crash sounded at their best in
Kevin Volans's new Joining Up the Dots for two pianos and strings, a
piece which suggests a time-stretched exploration of chordal material,
exposing unexpected cracks and shimmers, like a microscopically
close-up photograph of a piece of rock.
Michael Dervin, Irish Times
Cello Concerto (rev. 2005)
Gavriel Lipkind, RTE NSO/Robert Houlihan
It's natural
that the concerts in RTE's Horizons series which give Irish composers
the opportunity to present selections of their own and others' works,
should typically include items of an experimental nature. This week,
however, the music chosen by Kevin Volans gave a strong impression of
having moved beyond mere experimentation.
To be sure, his Strip-Weave and Andrew Hamilton's MAP are examples of
post-modern concept art - pieces that take an extra-musical idea as a
starting point. But their imagination, technique and self-criticism
that then take over yield results that are a far cry from the routine,
cut-and-paste minimimalist essay.
Volans, whose music is strongly indebted to field work in Africa,
combines mantra-like native rhythms with the sometimes random effect of
certain native fabrics. Both pieces make extensive use of repetition
and restricted use of chromaticism. They are neither overtly
challenging nor overtly flattering, yet each engages with itself in
such a way that it's impossible not to be engaged by it.
Under a completely dependable Robert Houlihan, the NSO matched the
sureness and freshness of the music with sure,fresh execution.
It's a measure of Volans's success that his Cello concerto originally
composed in 1997 has been so enthusiastically taken up by a soloist of
the calibre of Gavriel Lipkind. This was the first performance of a
revised version which, at Lipkind's request, is even more relentless
and uncompromising.
If the score doesn't always give the orchestra interesting things to
do, the same cannot be said of the jaw-dropping cello part. Lipkind
played it from memory with the unbridled panache of a rock artist.
Irish Times Review 2 Feb 2005,
Andrew Johnstone
Concerto for Double Orchestra
BBC Symphony Orchestra, Swensen, Barbican Hall, London
…Volans has said that he set out to write a piece that was empty of
content, an analogue to minimalist art (the concerto's starting point
was an exhibition by the sculptor Rebecca Horn). Essentially the
20-minute work is built from a single four-note chord, chosen for its
neutrality and derived from the open strings of a violin. The 90-piece
orchestra is divided into two almost identical ensembles, placed either
side of the conductor. The frugal material, constantly varied in its
colour, voicing and articulation, and just occasionally given a
chromatic twist, is passed between them.
It is music of extreme refinement and detail, and it unfolds at a rapid
tempo, even though that speed only becomes obvious occasionally, when
repeated pulsings erupt through the texture. There are some remarkable
passages: luminous chords surrounded by fluttering attacks, sonorous
progressions unfolded over held horn notes, repetitions tossed from one
side to the other. The overall form seems intuitive, though the return
of the opening gestures just before the end does hint at a kind of
closure.
If there are any models for the concerto, they would be found in the
music Morton Feldman and LaMonte Young produced in the early 1960s,
though Volans's raw material is more fundamental than theirs ever was.
What his piece does share with those composers is the need to be
performed as precisely as possible. This premiere, conducted by Joseph
Swensen, ironed out the dynamics so that triple fortes and triple
pianissimos sounded scarcely different, fudged some phrasing details,
and hardly separated the two halves of the orchestra, so that the
crucial sense of chords being passed from one side to the other barely
registered. It deserved far better.
Andrew Clements,
The Guardian, London 11 February, 2002
CONCERTO FOR DOUBLE ORCHESTRA (2002)
When I suggested
last week that Morton Feldman's beautifully unassertive music might
point to the music of the future, 1 did not expect confirmation within
a matter of days. But in the same Barbican Hall in which the BBC
Symphony Orchestra gave its portrait concert of the American composer,
they promptly premiered Kevin Volans's highly unusual Concerto for
Double Orchestra, completed to a BBC commission last year… Now,
however, he seems to have espoused Feldman's painterly aesthetic of
quiet abstraction and matt surfaces.
“The music of the 20th century is so cluttered and busy," he says. "I
wanted to write something that is full of empty spaces and that allows
the listener time to move about in." resulting piece, apparently
sketched in a day, has a starkness that is breathtaking. A single
chord, based on open fifths (the archetypal sound of string-instrument
tuning), is stretched out for 20 minutes, with the minimum of chromatic
inflection, to become a piece in its own right. The locus of musical
interest is moved from pitch, melody and harmony to rhythmic and
dynamic articulation and to texture, the latter being affected by the
use of parallel orchestras between which the bare rnaterial is
sometimes bounced in medieval "hocketing" (hiccuping) fashion.
The chord has a Stravinskyan bite that helps engage attention; and it
is true that history furnishes various "inventions on one note" and
static excursions such as the third (Farben) of Schoenberg's Five
Orchestral Pieces, with its "tone-colour melody", or Stockhausen's
single-pitch-dominated orchestral Inori, by way of a precedent for
Volans's reductiveness; but not even Feldman attempted so audacious an
"emptying-out" of content as this. If the less-than- convinced-sounding
account under Joseph Swensen was anything to go by, the piece is as
challenging to the players as to the listener. But, as with Feldman,
the asceticism on offer is not a minimalist stunt but a genuinely
spiritual investigation.
Paul Driver, The Sunday Times, London 17th Feb, 2002
String Quartet No. 6
"It is a piece for double quartet, or for one quartet with a prerecorded
tape. Volans describes it as an attempt at “emptiness”, the
musical equivalent of a blank canvas – a work without gesture or
historical reference. What he has achieved is very striking, a piece of
slowly meshing, slowly changing chords, absolutely lacking in rhetoric,
and that draws the listener into its 26 minutes with total assurance."
Andrew Clements - The Guardian, March 22nd 2002
"Kevin Volans sixth quartet is an altogether different animal. For
a start, it’s not a quartet at all but an octet: one “live”
quartet interacts with one pre-recorded quartet relayed by loudspeakers
(both in this case, the Duke). [...] The Duke were astonishingly assured
– locked in to a tape, this must be some of the hardest music to
play – slow chords (often double-stopped) and exposed harmonics well
controlled and impeccably tuned. Volans’ sixth is one of the most
beautiful and haunting works I have heard for a very long time."
Annette Morreau, Independent, April 4th 2002
"Volans had a different aim, that of “eliminating subject matter
as far as possible”. His objective, he says, is a musical equivalent
of a blank canvas. Mercifully, however, aim and achievement are not the
same, and the result here is a music of intense concentration whose scarcity
of ideas is an idea in itself."
Stephen Pettitt, The Sunday Times
"Not for Volans the outward journeys and safe returns of Western
sonata form. Absent too, is the dialogue between instruments at which
the combination of two violins and, viola and cello so excels.
Instead, the experience of hearing the piece is like watching footprints
disappear in dry sand. Such is the auditory effort required of the listener
to notice if anything is going on through the work’s 17 minute duration.
Colour takes priority over argument. The players perform against their
pre-recorded selves, sometimes leading, at others responding. Sustained
chords shift in and out of focus, rocking gently in quiet, puff-like explosions.
The result is a work of hypnotic simplicity."
Fiona Maddocks, The Observer, March 31st 2002
Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments CD
“…….Volans can create a sound that is arrestingly beautiful
and sustain interest in the way it is developed for the whole of the piece…….a
rare combination of directness and sophistication.”
Martyn Harry - Gramophone Jan 1998
4th and 5th Quartets, & Movement for String Quartet : Duke Quartet
“... For the listener the starting points are irrelevant; Volans's
handling of the medium is so adroit and his control of texture and rhythm
so well balanced that the music defines its own space…."
Andrew Clements - The Guardian April 1995
"… to create a silence that means something is one of the
highest skills in music, and Kevin Volans is one of its virtuosos.”
The Independent - May 1995
Cello Concerto
“(Volans) has transcended the African elements which influenced
his work from the time he studied in Cologne. He doesn’t quote from
an existing source of folklore, rather he has recreated his own individual,
cosmopolitan folklore.”
Christoph Schlüren - Frankfurter Rundschau Dec 1997
2nd and 3rd Quartets : Balanescu Quartet CD
“For want of a better definition Volans's music could be described
as minimalist - it is consistently buoyed up by its pulsing vitality and
its bracing cross rhythms.
Kevin Volans (is) ... one of the most distinctive creative voices of his
generation.”
Andrew Clements - The Guardian May 1994
The Songlines
"...in 'The Songlines Volans's music transports us, in an almost
cathartic way, to the intimate, internal world of our own imagination
...”
Bunita Marcus - Elle magazine New York 1989
Wanting to tell Stories
"his instrumental scores present their emotional content to the listener
in a non-specific way, innocent of any message you could put into words.
That remains true of the new piece……… richly textured,
varied and evocative as it is."
John Percival - The Times May 1993
The Man with Footsoles of Wind
"I have no hesitation in saying that Kevin Volans's first opera
is undoubtedly the major British operatic event of 1993 to date..."
Michael Blake - Tempo September 1993
"Kevin Volans … is a South African who has achieved international
fame beyond the norm for living composers of so-called serious music,
by means of a clutch of chamber works in which he purveys a beautifully
fresh, distinctive musical idiom...
Max Loppert - Opera September 1993
"I was gripped, stirred, and keep thinking about the opera."
Andrew Porter - The Observer July 1993
"Kevin Volans, a composer of compelling originality, never allows
his listener's attention to wander ... his sophisticated score simply
leaps to life and holds its audience willingly rapt from start to finish...”
Alexander Waugh - Evening Standard July 1993
Cover Him with Grass CD
"South African Volans has been the Kronos Quartet's best discovery.
Volans brings European polish to an African aesthetic without maiming
the latter. It's hard to convey how invigorating this music is..."
Kyle Gann - Village Voice September 1992
"I have played no record more often, or with greater joy, the whole
year"
Max Loppert - Financial Times Records of the year Dec 1990
"Among contemporary composers, Kevin Volans with White Man Sleeps
(Smith Quartet, Landor Barcelona) has provided lively listening and evidence
of a mind beyond the Western cultural ghetto."
Robert Maycock - The Independent Records of the year Dec 1990
"... the piece (White Man Sleeps) is full of infectious energy (firmly
rooted in steady pulsation, although there the connection with minimalism
ends) and a stream of deliciously limpid tunes. Those with a less sweet
tooth may find the rawness of the original instrumentation even more addictive
[...] Altogether a stunning record, and warmly recommended."
J.M. - Gramophone Oct 1991
She Who Sleeps with a Small Blanket
"... compendium of rhythmic and dynamic complexity, but so instinctively
musical in its pacing and contrast that it speaks powerfully to the emotions."
Kenneth Young - The Buffalo News April 1992
"...this remarkable and exhilarating score ... worked in abstract
terms with a complete exposition of conventional drumming technique."
Hugh Canning - The Guardian 1988
Hunting:Gathering
"Hunting:Gathering………has a very attractive surface
quality, polyrhythmic and sometimes extraordinarily beautiful. There is
an episode near the end of the first section that uses very short chordal
bows in cello and viola to achieve the most subtle counterpoint imaginable
- you're not even sure you're really hearing it."
Robert Everett-Green - The Globe and Mail Toronto 1988
"If Volans' String Quartet No 2, Hunting:Gathering calls the Janacek quartets to mind, that is because it is equally original, and just as daring and quirky. From the flexible freedom of the opening viola solo to the elegaic last movement, it is like a series of musical mirages ..."
Kneeling Dance : Piano Circus CD
"... There is something fresh and unjaded about his instrumental
pieces, and its patterened displacement produces results which are never
quite predictable"
David Wright - The Musical Times Feb 1994
" The music has a hypnotic richness as it shortens, extends, reverses
and intensifies."
Jonathan Webster - CD Review 1994
White Man Sleeps Versions 1 and 2
"The four dances were ravishingly and radiantly simple, dynamic
of rhythm, assuaging of utterance."
Paul Driver - Financial Times 1986
"These are remarkably ingenious, but also considerably affecting.”
P.W.D. - The Daily Telegraph 1982
"What Volans achieves here is a supreme simplicity that is also
eclectic, dignified and profound ...”
Christine Lucia - The Daily News Durban 1984
"The result is a music of fresh vigorous invention…endlessly
inventive in the effects they obtain from the same limited ensemble and
communicating enormous energy."
Andrew Clements - The Financial Times 1982
"I lay back and could not believe my ears.…. It was music I
had never heard before or could have imagined. It derived from nothing
and no one. It had arrived. It was free and alive...I believe this to
be devotional music of the highest order. For me, Kevin is one of the
more inventive composers since Stravinsky."
Bruce Chatwin - New York Review of Books and The Times 1989
Cicada CD
" The question whether it is still possible to write great piano
music is one that Kevin Volans has answered, magnificently in the affirmative,
in Cicada ... In Cicada , each reiteration of a cycle allows not only
a rehearing: it also invites one to listen to each complexly beautiful
fragment from a new angle, so putting into play a changing, dynamic whirl
of inner melodies. Other listeners will hear these differently; each time
I listen to Cicada I hear a different piece. Cicada is surely one of Volans's
finest and most extravagantly beautiful works...
Chrisopher Ballantine - International Record Review, May 2000
6th String Quartet
“ Volans is a writer of staggering gifts. He has the courage
to abandon familiar sound worlds and the skill to convince. From its score,
this 24 minute piece appears little more than a sequence of slow, sustained
chords passed between two quartets – with one vital instruction that
vibrato should only be used when marked.
But this is to belie the effect: a “rocking” motion is established
as the chordal texture is thickened or thinned, articulated only by the
subtlest of dynamic change. The ear strains to distinguish the source,
the sound balance so equal, the play of psychoacoustics magical, peaceful,
settling… Volans’ sixth is one of the most beautiful and haunting
works I have heard for a very long time.
Annette Morreau – Independent London 2 April 2001